Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov. Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov - Russian writer; the largest Russian prose writer, the most brilliant Soviet non-intellectual writer, who made the life of the Don Cossacks the subject of intense reader interest; Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR ( 1939 ), twice Hero of Socialist Labor ( 1967, 1980 ). Laureate of the Stalin ( 1941 ), Leninskaya ( 1960 ) and Nobel ( 1965 ) premiums.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was born May 11 (24), 1905 on the Kruzhilin farm of the village of the Veshenskaya region of the Don Cossacks.

The illegitimate son of a Ukrainian woman, the wife of the Don Cossack A.D. Kuznetsova and a wealthy clerk (the son of a merchant, a native of the Ryazan region) A.M. Sholokhov. In early childhood, he bore the surname Kuznetsov, received an allotment of land as a "son of a Cossack." In 1913, after being adopted by his own father, lost Cossack privileges, becoming the "son of a tradesman."

He grew up in an atmosphere of obvious ambiguity, which, obviously, gave rise to a craving for truth and justice in Sholokhov's character, but at the same time the habit of hiding everything about himself as much as possible. Numerous legends were spread about Sholokhov's youth during his lifetime, which are not confirmed by anything, contradict historical facts and elementary logic, but the writer never refuted them. He graduated from the four classes of the gymnasium. During the Civil War, the Sholokhov family could be under attack from two sides: for the White Cossacks, they were "non-residents", for the Reds - "exploiters". Young Sholokhov did not have a passion for hoarding (like his hero, the son of a wealthy Cossack Makar Nagulnov) and took the side of the victorious force that established at least relative peace, served in the food detachment, but arbitrarily reduced the taxation of people of his circle; was on trial.

His elder friend and mentor (“mamunya” in letters addressed to her), a member of the RSDLP (b) since 1903 E.G. Levitskaya (Sholokhov himself joined the party in 1932 ), to whom the story “The Fate of a Man” was subsequently dedicated, believed that there was a lot of autobiographical in Grigory Melekhov’s “reelings” in The Quiet Don. Sholokhov changed many professions, especially in Moscow, where he lived for a long time from the end of 1922 to 1926. Then, after gaining a foothold in literature, he settled in the village of Veshenskaya.

In 1923 Sholokhov printed feuilletons, from the end of 1923- stories in which he immediately switched from feuilleton comedy to sharp drama, reaching tragedy. At the same time, the stories were not devoid of elements of melodrama. Most of these works were collected in the collections "Don stories" ( 1925 ) and "Azure Steppe" ( 1926, revised previous collection). With the exception of the story "Strange Blood" ( 1926) , where the old man Gavrila and his wife, who have lost their son, a white Cossack, nurse a communist food orderer and begin to love him like a son, and he leaves them, in the early works, Sholokhov's heroes are mostly sharply divided into positive ones (red fighters, Soviet activists) and negative, sometimes unadulterated villains (whites, "bandits", fists and fists). Many characters have real prototypes, but Sholokhov sharpens almost everything, exaggerates: death, blood, torture, hunger pangs are deliberately naturalistic. Favorite plot of a young writer, starting with "The Mole" (1923 ), - a deadly clash of the next of kin: father and son, siblings.

Sholokhov still unskillfully confirms his loyalty to the communist idea, emphasizing the priority of social choice in relation to any other human relationships, including family ones. In 1931 he republished Don Stories, adding new ones, which emphasized the comic in the behavior of the characters (later, in Virgin Soil Upturned, he combined comedy with drama, sometimes quite effectively). Then, for almost a quarter of a century, the stories were not reprinted, the author put them very low and returned them to the reader when, for lack of a new one, they had to remember the forgotten old.

In 1925 Sholokhov began a work about the Cossacks in 1917, during the Kornilov revolt, under the title Quiet Don (and not Donshchina, according to legend). However, this plan was abandoned, but a year later the writer again takes up the "Quiet Flows the Don", widely unfolding the picture of the pre-war life of the Cossacks and the events of the First World War. The first two books of the epic novel are being published in 1928 in October magazine. Almost immediately there are doubts about their authorship, too much knowledge and experience required a work of this magnitude. Sholokhov brought the manuscripts to Moscow for examination (in the 1990s, the Moscow journalist L.E. Kolodny gave a description of them, although not strictly scientific, and comments on them). The young writer was full of energy, had a phenomenal memory, read a lot (in the 1920s even the memoirs of white generals were available), asked the Cossacks in the Don farms about the "German" and civil wars, and knew the life and customs of his native Don like no one else .

The events of collectivization (and those preceding it) delayed work on the epic novel. In letters, including to I.V. Stalin, Sholokhov tried to open his eyes to the true state of things: the complete collapse of the economy, lawlessness, torture applied to collective farmers. However, he accepted the very idea of ​​collectivization and, in a softened form, with undeniable sympathy for the main communist characters, showed on the example of the Gremyachiy Log farm in the first book of the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” ( 1932 ). Even a very flattened depiction of dispossession (“right-wing deviator” Razmetny and others) was very suspicious for the authorities and semi-official writers, in particular, the Novy Mir magazine rejected the author’s title of the novel “With Blood and Sweat”. But in many ways the work suited Stalin. The high artistic level of the book, as it were, proved the fruitfulness of communist ideas for art, and courage within the limits of what was permitted created the illusion of freedom of creativity in the USSR. "Virgin Soil Upturned" was declared a perfect example of the literature of socialist realism and soon entered into all school programs, becoming a mandatory work for study.

This directly or indirectly helped Sholokhov continue work on The Quiet Don, the release of the third book (sixth part) of which was delayed due to a rather sympathetic portrayal of the participants in the anti-Bolshevik Upper Don uprising of 1919. Sholokhov turned to Gorky and with his help obtained permission from Stalin to publish this book without cuts ( 1932 ), A in 1934 basically completed the fourth, last, but began to rewrite it again, probably not without increased ideological pressure. In the last two books of The Quiet Flows the Don (the seventh part of the fourth book was published in 1937-1938, eighth - in 1940) a lot of journalistic, often didactic, unambiguously pro-Bolshevik declarations appeared, quite often contradicting the plot and figurative structure of the epic novel. But this does not add arguments to the theory of “two authors” or “author” and “co-author”, developed by skeptics who irrevocably do not believe in the authorship of Sholokhov (A.I. Solzhenitsyn, I.B. Tomashevskaya among them).

In 1935 the already mentioned Levitskaya admired Sholokhov, finding that he had turned "from a 'doubter', a staggering one, into a firm communist, who knew where he was going, who clearly saw both the goal and the means to achieve it." Undoubtedly, the writer convinced himself of this, and although in 1938 almost fell victim to a false political accusation, found the courage to end The Quiet Flows the Don with the complete collapse of his beloved hero Grigory Melekhov, crushed by the wheel of cruel history.

There are more than 600 characters in the epic novel, and most of them perish or die from grief, deprivation, absurdities and the disorder of life. The civil war, although at first it seems “toy” to “German” veterans, takes the lives of almost all the heroes who are remembered and loved by the reader, and the bright life, for which it was supposedly worth making such sacrifices, never comes.

The epic content in The Quiet Flows the Don has not supplanted the novel, the personal. Sholokhov, like no one else, managed to show the complexity of a simple person (intellectuals do not arouse sympathy for him, in The Quiet Don they are mostly in the background and invariably speak bookish language even with Cossacks who do not understand them). The passionate love of Grigory and Aksinya, the true love of Natalya, the debauchery of Daria, the absurd mistakes of the aging Pantelei Prokofich, the mortal longing of the mother for her son who does not return from the war (Ilyinichna according to Grigory) and other tragic life interweaving make up the richest gamut of characters and situations. The life and nature of the Don are meticulously and, of course, lovingly depicted. The author conveys the sensations experienced by all human senses. The intellectual limitations of many heroes are compensated by the depth and sharpness of their experiences.

In The Quiet Don, the writer's talent spilled out in full force - and almost exhausted. Probably, this was facilitated not only by the social situation, but also by the writer's ever-increasing addiction to alcohol. The Science of Hate story 1942) , who campaigned for hatred of the Nazis, in terms of artistic quality turned out to be below the average of the Don Stories. The level of printed in 1943-1944 chapters from the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", conceived as a trilogy, but never finished ( in the 1960s. Sholokhov attributed the "pre-war" chapters with talk about Stalin and the repressions of 1937 in the spirit of the already ended "thaw", they were printed with cuts, which completely deprived the writer of creative inspiration). The work consists mainly of soldiers' conversations and tales, oversaturated with jokes. In general, Sholokhov's failure in comparison not only with the first, but also with the second novel is obvious.

After the war, Sholokhov the publicist paid a generous tribute to the official state ideology, however, he noted the “thaw” with a work of rather high dignity - the story “The Fate of a Man” ( 1956 ). An ordinary person, a typical Sholokhov hero, appeared in a genuine moral greatness that he himself did not realize. Such a plot could not have appeared in the “first post-war spring”, which coincided with the meeting between the author and Andrei Sokolov: the hero was in captivity, he drank vodka without a snack so as not to humiliate himself in front of German officers - this, like the humanistic spirit of the story itself, was by no means not in line with the official literature nurtured by Stalinism. "The Fate of Man" turned out to be at the origins of a new concept of personality, more broadly - a new major stage in the development of literature.

The second book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", completed by the publication in 1960, remained basically only a sign of the transitional period, when humanism bulged out in every possible way, but thereby the desired was presented as real. "Warming" of the images of Davydov (sudden love for "Varyukha Goryukha"), Nagulnov (listening to cock singing, secret love for Lushka, etc.), Razmetnov (shooting cats in the name of saving pigeons - popular at the turn of the 1950s-1960s "Birds of the World"), etc. was emphasized "modern" and did not fit with the harsh realities of 1930, which formally remained the basis of the plot.

The writer L.K. Chukovskaya, in her letter to Sholokhov, predicted creative sterility after his speech at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU (1966) with defamation of A.D. Sinyavsky and Yu. M. Daniel. The prediction came true completely.

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Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 11 (24), 1905. Parents - Alexander Mikhailovich Sholokhov and Anastasia Danilovna Kuznetsova (nee Chernikova). Place of birth - the Kruzhilin village of the village of Veshenskaya, Donetsk district, the former Region of the Don Cossacks.

Father - a raznochinets, a native of the Ryazan province, until his death (1925) changed professions. He was consistently: "shibay" (cattle buyer), sowed bread on purchased Cossack land, served as a clerk in a commercial enterprise on a farm scale, as a manager at a steam mill, etc.

Mother - half-Cossack, half-peasant. I learned to read and write when my father took me to the gymnasium, so that, without resorting to my father's help, I could write letters to me on my own. Until 1912, both she and I had land: she, like the widow of a Cossack, and I, like the son of a Cossack ... ”(M. Sholokhov. Autobiography. 1931).

The house in the Kruzhilin farm, where M.A. Sholokhov was born. Photo by V. Temin. 1930s

“From birth, little Misha breathed wonderful steppe air over the endless expanse of the steppe, and the hot sun scorched him, dry winds carried huge dusty clouds and baked his lips. And the quiet Don, along which the skiffs of the Cossack fishermen blackened, was indelibly reflected in his heart. And the mowing in the loan, and the heavy steppe work of plowing, sowing, harvesting wheat - all this put line after line on the appearance of a boy, then a young man, all this molded him into a young working Cossack, mobile, cheerful, ready for a joke, for a kindly one, cheerful smirk. He also molded him outwardly: a broad-shouldered, strongly built Cossack with a strong steppe bronze face, scorched by the sun and winds.

(A.S. Serafimovich)

Having moved to the Kargin farm, Mikhail Sholokhov first studies at home with a teacher T.T. Mrykhin, and then enters the Karginsky parochial one-class school.

Timofey Timofeevich Mrykhin, the first teacher of M. Sholokhov, was not only a born teacher, but also an expert in Russian literature and folk music, he knew and sang Don Cossack songs well.

In 1914, Mikhail Sholokhov was taken by his father to Moscow to the eye clinic of Dr. K.V. Snegirev (Kolpachny per., 11). The writer brought here his favorite hero Grigory Melekhov, who arrived in Moscow in a medical train to treat an eye damaged in battle. After the October Revolution, K.V. Snegirev lived in the same house and continued to manage the eye clinic. M. Sholokhov remembered the "handsome, trimmed beard" owner of the hospital and described him on the pages of his novel.

T.T.Mrykhin with his wife Ulyana

The former mansion of K.V. Snegirev in Kolpachny Lane.

Upon recovery, Sholokhov was assigned to the preparatory class of the private men's gymnasium. G. Shelaputin (now per. Viktor Kholzunov, 14). It was a well-equipped, well-trained, and state-of-the-art private school. (Now - the building of the General Military Prosecutor's Office).

Misha lived in the apartment of a relative on his father's side - A.P. Ermolov, in Dolgoy lane, on Plyushchikha, 20, apartment 7. (the house has been demolished). He made friends with the owner's son, Sasha Yermolov. He was friends with him until his death in 1969. As Maria Sergeevna Ermolova (wife of A.A. Ermolov) recalled, usually, when the writer was visiting, his passenger car, in which he came to Plyushchikha, at that time drove around Moscow the guys who were gathering from all over the yard. They were the same age as Misha Sholokhov when he lived in Dolgoy Lane, in a small Moscow house.

In 1915, the parents transferred M. Sholokhov to study at the Boguchar men's gymnasium in the Voronezh province. Misha Sholokhov lived in the family of the priest Dmitry Ivanovich Tishansky, who taught the Law of God at the gymnasium. The house had a rich library, and Misha was allowed to read books, which and as much as he wanted.

In 1918, the gymnasium was closed, and he had to go home, to the Pleshakov farm. In the fall, Mikhail was sent to a mixed gymnasium that had just opened in Veshenskaya, where he studied for several months.

Fourteen-year-old Mikhail saw with his own eyes many of the tragic events of the Veshensky uprising of 1919: the massacre of captured Red Army soldiers, the murder of I. A. Serdinov by Daria Drozdova, the presentation of awards and cash bonuses to her by General Sidorin, commander of the Don Army. While living in Pleshakovo, he witnessed the death of the commander of the insurgent hundred cornet Pavel Drozdov (the son of the owner of the house in which the Sholokhov family lived). Separate traits of the characters of family members, especially Pavel and Alexei, according to the writer himself, were reflected in the images of Grigory and Peter Melekhov. In late May - early June, visiting relatives, merchants Mokhovs in Veshenskaya, I witnessed the arrival of the Cossack general A. S. Secretev in Veshenskaya.

“Poets are born in different ways,” M.A. Sholokhov said many years later. “For example, I was born out of the civil war on the Don.”

From an autobiography (1934): “... I could not continue my studies, since the Don region became the scene of a fierce civil war. Before the Don region was occupied by the Red Army, he lived on the territory of the White Cossack government” (IMLI Archive, f. 143, op. 1, item 5).

In 1919, the Sholokhov family moved first to the Rubizhny farm, and then to the village of Karginskaya, where the writer's father bought a Cossack farmstead on the outskirts of the village.

In January 1920, Soviet power was established in the village of Karginskaya. Mikhail Sholokhov works as a clerk, teaches adults to read and write, participates in the population census, serves in the food detachment, and along the way, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, participates in an amateur theater and even writes plays for the drama circle. “Since 1920, he served and roamed the Don land. For a long time he was a laborer. I was chasing the gangs that ruled the Don until 1922, and the gangs were chasing us. I had to be in different bindings ... "

(Sholokhov. Autobiography 1931).

As one of the fighters of the food detachment, he falls into the hands of Nestor Makhno. For various versions of this meeting, see http://veshki-bazar.narod.ru/makhno.htm

In 1922, he met Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya, a school teacher and an employee of the Bukanov Executive Committee.

In December 1923, in the village of Bukanovskaya, on January 11, 1924, he married MP Gromoslavskaya, the daughter of the former village chieftain. The Sholokhovs had an eldest daughter Svetlana (1926), then sons Alexander (1930, Rostov-on-Don), Mikhail (1935, Moscow), daughter Maria (1938, st. Veshenskaya).

In October 1922, Sholokhov left for Moscow in order to continue his education and try his hand at writing. However, it was not possible to enter the workers' faculty due to the lack of work experience and direction of the Komsomol required for admission. To feed himself, he worked as a loader, handyman, and bricklayer. Then he was sent by the labor exchange to the position of accountant of the housing department No. 803 in Krasnaya Presnya. He got a small eight-meter room in Georgievsky lane No. 2, apt. 5. In January 1924, Mikhail's wife, Maria Petrovna, came to this room.

He was engaged in self-education, took part in the work of the literary group "Young Guard", attended training sessions conducted by V. Shklovsky, O. Brik, N. Aseev. Joined the Komsomol.

On September 19, 1923, the first publication of Mikhail Sholokhov appeared - the feuilleton "Test (an incident from the life of one county in the Dvina region)" in the newspaper "Youthful Truth" (1923, No. 35) signed by M. Sholokh.

In December 1924, in the newspaper Molodoy Leninets, Sholokhov published his first story, Mole, and in the same month became a member of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). From that time on, the intense literary activity of the writer began, closely connected with the life of the people and the largest events in the country.

In 1925, the stories of M. Sholokhov "Aleshkin's Heart" and "Two-husband" were published in separate books in mass circulation.

In 1925 M. Sholokhov met with A. Serafimovich.

In Serafimovich's diary on that day it is written: "And the devil knows how talented! .."

Sholokhov himself later spoke about the role Serafimovich played in his creative destiny: “Serafimovich belongs to the generation of writers from whom we, the youth, studied. Personally, I am truly indebted to Serafimovich, for he was the first to support me at the very beginning of my writing activity, he was the first to say a word of encouragement to me, a word of recognition. This, of course, leaves its mark on our relations. I will never forget the year 1925, when Serafimovich, having familiarized himself with the first collection of my stories, not only wrote a warm introduction to it, but also wanted to see me. Our first meeting took place in the First House of Soviets. Serafimovich assured me that I should continue to write, to study ”(collection“ Word of the Motherland ”. Rostov-on-Don, 1951, p. 84)

Later, at one of the literary evenings of the MAPP, which took place in the building of Proletkult, on Vozdvizhenka, the chairman AS Serafimovich introduced his countryman to the audience. Sholokhov read one of his Don Stories that evening. (Subsequently, he will dedicate the story “Alien Blood” to Serafimovich).

At the very beginning of 1926, the first collection of the writer "Don stories" was published, the preface to which was written by A. Serafimovich. There are 8 stories in the collection, but M. Sholokhov does not stop there, in the same year a new collection is published - “Azure Steppe”, which already includes 12 stories.

In the creative plans of the young writer, the idea of ​​​​creating a large canvas from the life of the Cossacks is born.

“... I took up the Quiet Don when I was twenty years old, in 1925. At first, interested in the tragic history of the Russian Revolution, I turned my attention to General Kornilov. He led the famous rebellion of 1917. And on his instructions, General Krymov went to Petrograd to overthrow the Provisional Government of Kerensky. For two or one and a half years I wrote 6-8 printed sheets ... then I felt: something was not working out for me. The reader, even the Russian reader, in fact did not know who the Don Cossacks were. There was Tolstoy's story "The Cossacks", but it had the life of the Terek Cossacks as a plot basis. In fact, not a single work was created about the Don Cossacks. The life of the Don Cossacks differs sharply from the life of the Kuban Cossacks, not to mention the Terek ones, and it seemed to me that I should have started by describing this family way of life of the Don Cossacks, so I left the work I had begun in 1925, began<...>from the description of the Melekhov family, and then it dragged on like that ... ”(From a conversation between M. A. Sholokhov and students of the Faculty of Slavic Studies in Uppsala (Sweden) in December 1965).

In October 1927, he met E.G. Levitskaya, head. department of the publishing house of the MK VKP (b) "Moskovsky Rabochiy". Separate editions of "Quiet Don" are published by the publishing house "Moskovsky Rabochiy" in "Roman-gazeta", 1 and 2 books.

In the archives of Moscow, Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk, the writer went through and studied many orders, reports, appeals, directives, materials of the Soviet and White Guard press (Priyma K. On a par with the century. Articles on the work of M. A. Sholokhov. Rostov n / a , 1981. S. 161-162.) Gets acquainted with the participants of the Veshensky uprising of 1919. For example, with Kharlampy Vasilyevich Ermakov, the prototype of Grigory Melekhov: http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=736522&cid=460

In 1928, he participated in the work of the 1st All-Union Congress of Proletarian Writers as a delegate of the MAPP.

1928, October 1 - the plenum of the board of the RAPP introduced Sholokhov to the editorial board of the magazine "October".

In 1928-1929, articles "for" and "against" the novel appeared.

In Berlin in 1929, the first translation of The Quiet Flows the Don was published (translator O. Halpern). For the fate of M. Sholokhov's books, see http://rslovar.com/ http://litena.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000027/st003.shtml

The first foreign response to the novel "Quiet Don" is an article by Bella Illes in the Hungarian newspaper "100%".

From a review in Die Linkskurve, 1929, no. 3 (October):
Weiskopf F.: “Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don” is the fulfillment of the promise that the young Soviet literature gave to the West, which was beginning to listen to it. Quiet Flows the Don testifies to how a new literature is developing, strong in its originality, a literature that is wide and boundless, like the Russian steppe, young and indomitable, like a new generation there, in the Soviet Union. And the fact that in the already well-known works of young Russian prose writers (“The Defeat” by Fadeev, “Bruski” by Panferov, short stories and stories by Babel and Ivanov) was often just outlined, it was still an embryo - a new angle of view, an approach to the problem from a completely unexpected side, the power of artistic reflection - all this in Sholokhov's novel has already received its full development. The grandeur of its idea, the diversity of life, the penetrating incarnation of "Quiet Flows the Don" resembles "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy. See http://feb-web.ru/feb/sholokh/shl-abc/shl/shl-0461.htm?cmd=2&istext=1

1929-1930 - Creation of the film "Quiet Flows the Don"

Quiet Flows the Don is a 1930 silent film produced in the USSR. The film was sounded in 1933. The first film adaptation of the first two completed books of the novel of the same name by Mikhail Sholokhov. Starring A. Abrikosov and E. Tsesarskaya. The premiere of the silent film took place on May 14, 1931, sounded on September 14, 1933.

In one of his private letters in 1928, Gorky gives the following assessment to Sholokhov: “Sholokhov, judging by the first volume, is talented ... Every year he nominates more and more talented people. Here is joy. Rus' is very, anathematically talented.” It is M. Gorky who helps M. Sholokhov meet I. Stalin.

1930, after January 5th. Meeting and conversation between M. Sholokhov and I. V. Stalin. In June 1931, at the dacha of A.M. Gorky in Kraskov, M.A. Sholokhov met with I. Stalin.

Rumors of plagiarism intensified after the publication in 1930 of a collection in memory of Leonid Andreev, which included a letter from Andreev to critic Sergei Goloushev, dated September 3, 1917. In this letter, Andreev mentioned Goloushev's "Quiet Don", which after that became the first contender for the title of a genuine author. Only in 1977 did it become clear that the letter was only about travel notes entitled “From the Quiet Don”, published in a Moscow newspaper.

Sholokhov knew this fact. He wrote to Serafimovich: “I received a number of letters from guys from Moscow and from readers in which they ask me and inform me that there are again rumors that I stole The Quiet Don from the critic Goloushev - a friend of L. Andreev - and as if there is indisputable evidence of this in the book-requiem in memory of L. Andreev, composed by his relatives.

In 1930, having interrupted work on The Quiet Don, M. Sholokhov began writing the novel Virgin Soil Upturned (originally called With Sweat and Blood). In 1932, Novy Mir published 1 book of the novel.

In the novel, M. Sholokhov tells about the resistance of the Russian peasantry to forced collectivization. In letters, including to Stalin, the writer tries to open his eyes to the true state of things: the complete collapse of the economy, lawlessness, and torture applied to collective farmers. In the 40-50s. he subjected the first volume to a significant revision, and in 1960 completed work on the second volume.

In 1933, active work began on the production of the play "Virgin Soil Upturned" at the Leningrad Theater of LOSPS.

Georgian director N.M. Shengelaya begins to work on the filming of the film based on the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned”. M. Sholokhov takes part in writing the script. However, the film was not made. Only in 1938, Y. Raizman, based on the script by M. Sholokhov and S. Yermolinsky, made a film with the participation of artists of the Moscow Art Theater: B. Dobronravov (Davydov), M. Bolduman (Nagulnov), L. Kalyuzhnaya (Lushka), V. Dorofeev (grandfather Shchukar ). The music for the film was written by Georgy Sviridov.

In 1934, August 17 - September 1, M.A. Sholokhov takes part in the work of the 1st All-Union Congress of Writers. Elected to the Presidium of the Congress.

At the end of 1934, M. Sholokhov and his wife went on a business trip to Sweden, Denmark, England, France (which lasted almost 2 months).

In 1934, he met the composer I.I. Dzerzhinsky at the National Hotel in Moscow. The opera Quiet Flows the Don will soon be written. The first production took place on October 22, 1935 at the Leningrad Maly Opera House. The libretto is based on freely reworked episodes from the first and second books of Sholokhov's novel (1925-1929). The plot of the opera differs in many respects from the literary source. The changes affected mainly the image of Aksinya, who is shown in the opera not as a "stranger's wife", but as a lonely woman, passionately feeling, deeply experiencing her personal drama. M. Sholokhov expressed his impression of the opera as follows: Maybe your opera will be liked in big cities, but here, on the Don, its music will be alien and incomprehensible. Since you are writing an opera about the Don Cossacks, how can you ignore their songs ... "

Scene from 3 acts of the opera

Nikandr Khanaev as Grigory Melekhov. Big theater. 1936.

On June 20, 1936, M. Sholokhov spoke at a funeral meeting in the village of Veshenskaya on the day of the funeral of Maxim Gorky, he spoke about his love for him, about his colossal versatile knowledge and about his amazing writing gift.

In 1936, M. Sholokhov corresponded with Nikolai Ostrovsky and managed to meet him in Moscow at the end of 1936, a month before the death of N.A. Ostrovsky. M. Sholokhov wrote an article on the death of the writer: “Millions will learn to win by his example.” For their relationship, see http://www.sholokhov.ru/museum/collection/books/1299/

M. Sholokhov treated the memory of N. A. Ostrovsky with reverence. In 1973, he gave the Museum of N. A. Ostrovsky in Moscow a copy of “How the Steel Was Tempered” with the inscription: “This book has withstood the test of time, its influence on the youth of the socialist countries is still enormous and unchanged. And this is excellent. M. Sholokhov. 26.2.73. Moscow” (autograph, GCP named after N. A. Ostrovsky), and in 1977 he wrote a preface to a three-volume edition of the works of N. A. Ostrovsky in Ukrainian (Kyiv: publishing house “Molod”, 1977).

In the 30s. M. Sholokhov actively "stands up" for many of the repressed and accused of false denunciations (E. Tsesarskaya - the performer of the role of Aksinya, writer E. Permitin - see http://xn--90aefkbacm4aisie.xn--p1ai/content/ya-ne -mogu-umirat, etc.).

In 1940, M. Sholokhov completed the last part of the novel Quiet Flows the Don.

In January 1941, M. Sholokhov was awarded the Stalin Prize for his novel in four books, The Quiet Flows the Don. On June 23, 1941, M. Sholokhov wrote a letter to Marshal S. Timoshenko, in which he asked to transfer the prize awarded to him to the USSR Defense Fund.

"People's Commissar of Defense Tymoshenko. Dear comrade Timoshenko. I ask you to transfer the Stalin Prize awarded to me to the USSR Defense Fund. At your call, at any moment I am ready to join the ranks of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army and defend the socialist Motherland and the great cause of Lenin-Stalin to the last drop of blood. Regimental Commissar of the Red Army Reserve, writer Mikhail Sholokhov.

In 1941-45. serves as a war correspondent for the Soviet Information Bureau. Demobilized in December 1945.

After an accident during a forced landing of a bomber in Kuibyshev, on which M.A. Sholokhov flew on the call of the head of the Sovinformburo, the writer was treated in a hospital for severe concussion and bruises. After treatment, M. A. Sholokhov and the poet E. Dolmatovsky were near Stalingrad. From there they came to the Sholokhov family in Nikolaevsk.

M. A. Sholokhov wrote home about the consequences of the plane crash: “... I underwent an average repair in the Kremlin hospital and now I’m almost in working form, I’m writing, but there was a time when not only to go somewhere, but also not to write could by the prohibition of professors. I almost got disabled, but somehow I got lame, and now I’m already digging the ground with my foot ... ”(Collected works in 9 vols. Vol. 8. S. 322-323).

S. M. Sholokhova recalls that his father had a displacement of all internal organs, but he refused long-term inpatient treatment. He left for Nikolaevka.

The chairman of the collective farm and local fishermen supported the writer, helped with food, brought cream, fish, caviar (From a conversation between N. T. Kuznetsova and S. M. Sholokhova on September 20, 1990).

Learning about all this, Stalin insisted on his vacation. There was a meeting with Stalin.

From Moscow, Sholokhov went to the city of Nikolaevsk, Stalingrad (now Volgograd) region, to move his family to Veshenskaya, as he was convinced that the Germans would not undertake offensive operations in his native places (Mikhail Sholokhov. Chronicle of life and work, 184-185) .

During the war, M. Sholokhov wrote essays “People of the Red Army”, “Prisoners of War”, “In the South”, etc.

During the war, Olga Berggolts remained in besieged Leningrad along with her second husband, Nikolai Molchanov. It was during these difficult blockade days, working in the literary and dramatic editorial office of the Leningrad radio, that she grew from a little-known writer and poetess into a mature author who personified the stamina and courage of the inhabitants of the besieged city.

“In May 1942, at the initiative of Sholokhov, my February Diary was published in Komsomolskaya Pravda, and shortly after that, Leningrad Diary. They evoked a warm response from readers on all fronts ... "

She confided: “They don’t know anything about Leningrad. On the radio, before I could open my mouth, they told me: “No mention of hunger!” Everything is hidden ... just like about Yezhov's prison. Censorship of the truth!

He immediately remembered: this was the wife of the poet Boris Kornilov, who was shot “according to politics,” and she herself served time, but she was lucky, she was released ahead of schedule.

In the evening at the hotel, she read her poems to him, and then took away Sholokhov's Letter to the Leningraders. He began heartily, without pathos: “Fellow comrades of Leningrad! We know how hard it is for you to live, work, fight in an enemy environment ... "

British journalist Alexander Werth recalled this time in his book Russia at War. 1941-1945”: “In the summer of 1942, both in literature and in propaganda, only two feelings reigned supreme. One was the same love for the motherland, which permeated everything that was written in the midst of the battle near Moscow - only now it is even more ardent and tender. It was also love for Russia proper. The second emotion was hatred. During all these months, it grew and grew, until it finally poured out in the darkest days of August into a paroxysm of the most real rage. The cry "Kill the German!" became in Russia the expression of all ten commandments, merged into one. Sholokhov's story "The Science of Hate" published on June 23 in many newspapers, the story of a Russian prisoner of war, whom German soldiers subjected to cruel torture, made a deep impression on the Soviet public. Vividly and convincingly written, this story largely set the tone for the hate propaganda that unfolded in the weeks that followed.

On July 8, 1942, the Nazis bombed the village of Veshenskaya. A fragment of one of the bombs that exploded in the Sholokhovs' courtyard killed the writer's mother, Anastasia Danilovna.

The special correspondent of the "Red Star" M. Sholokhov was assigned to the Stalingrad Front for eight months. On December 22, M. Sholokhov was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad". The commander of the 62nd Army, V. I. Chuikov, recalled: “... In the difficult days and nights of the Battle of Stalingrad, Soviet soldiers saw in their midst the writers M. Sholokhov, K. Simonov, A. Surkov, E. Dolmatovsky and other fighters of the “literary shelf". Their word can be compared to a live projectile that smashes the most dangerous target in the camp of the enemy ... ”(Mikhail Sholokhov. Chronicle of Life and Work, 194).

At the end of 1942, immediately after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, M. Sholokhov began to write the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", separate chapters of the novel were published in 1943-1944 and 1949-1954. in the newspapers "Pravda" and "Red Star". In 1945, the chapters of the novel were published as a separate edition in Rosizdat.

Jack Lindsay (England) in the article "Sholokhov's Innovation" made an interesting observation: "The interpretation that we gave here to the last pages of The Quiet Flows the Don, the tragic and hopeful meeting of Grigory with his son, apparently finds its confirmation in the amazing story "Destiny of Man". A soldier who has escaped from Hitler's captivity and makes his way to the house feels, like Grigory, just as destitute, completely deprived of everything that is most dear to him, although this is due to completely different reasons. Having met a hungry orphan boy on the way, the soldier adopts him. And gradually, in communion with this little living creature, he begins to regain for himself some kind of purpose and hope in life. Here everything is condensed by Sholokhov to the basic features of a tragedy; and yet here, as it were, finds a simple earthly completion of what remains only a symbol in the last scene of The Quiet Flows the Don. Life, stiff, broken, naked and homeless, takes root again; out of the pitiless and inhuman, human intimacy grows and asserts itself - on a wider, fuller and more reliable basis. (Quoted from: Ognev A. Here he is, a Russian man! // Volga. 1980, No. 5. P. 182).

O. G. Vereisky. Illustration for Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man". 1958

In 1959, Sergei Bondarchuk made a film based on M. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man". See http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/komrik/post360914827

And 15 years later, Sergei Bondarchuk again turned to the work of his beloved writer. He begins to shoot the film "They fought for the Motherland." Sholokhov for a long time refused to give permission to shoot a film based on an unfinished work, but then he agreed on the condition that he himself choose the place where the film would be shot.

The ensemble cast was superstar: Bondarchuk himself, Vasily Shukshin, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, Georgy Burkov, Yuri Nikulin, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolai Gubenko, Evgeny Samoilov, Andrey Rostotsky, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Nonna Mordyukova, Irina Skobtseva, Angelina Stepanova, Lidia Fedoseeva-Shukshina...

“M. Sholokhov appreciated the talents of his colleagues and was not afraid to support them. He nominates the disgraced Anna Akhmatova for the highest award in the country, rescues her son, scientist Lev Gumilyov, from prison, seeks the publication of the recent prisoner of the NKVD Olga Berggolts, the outcast writer Andrei Platonov and the release of his son from the camp, signs a letter in defense of Korney Chukovsky, praises prose apolitical Konstantin Paustovsky, the future political emigrant Viktor Nekrasov. He also supported the idea of ​​publishing “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by A. Solzhenitsyn with a forbidden camp theme” (V.O. Osipov).

In Veshenskaya, M. Sholokhov constantly meets with young writers, helps them in the publication of their works, shares the secrets of mastery. In the 1950-80s. actively engaged in social activities. There are numerous memoirs of contemporaries - doctors, teachers, ordinary collective farmers, students - whom M. Sholokhov helped in difficult everyday situations.

The decision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to award the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1965 to the Soviet writer M. A. Sholokhov.

According to TASS reports from Sweden, Eric Blomberg, a well-known Swedish poet and publicist, expressing the opinion of the radical circles in Sweden, again nominated Mikhail Sholokhov as a candidate and appeared in Nu Dag with a series of articles devoted to his work.

E. Blomberg's statement in 1935 is well-known: in his opinion, M. A. Sholokhov "like no other, deserves the Nobel Prize, which should be awarded both for artistic merit and for high ideological content." These words of E. Blomberg were cited in the newspapers Social-Democratic and Niu Dag (Pravda, 1965, October 18.) (Mikhail Sholokhov, Chronicle of Life and Work, 373-374).

“He passionately loves his steppe, with its dry winds, sometimes hot, sometimes gentle sun, with its ravines, copses, with its animals, birds. He passionately loves his quiet Don, which, gently bending, so softly, gently hugging the village with green banks, created a surprisingly cozy, sincere, quiet, slightly thoughtful corner. And in the Don there is a fish, a rich, sharp-nosed sterlet, and Sholokhov devotes himself entirely to fishing.

(A. Serafimovich)

In 1984, on January 18, M. Sholokhov wrote from the Central Clinical Hospital to the artist Yu.P. Rebrov: “I received my portrait - your gift, the work that you created. Thank you very much, dear Yuri Petrovich. I remember well how you worked on the illustrations for The Quiet Flows the Don. M.A. Sholokhov.

January 21, 1984 M.A. Sholokhov returns from Moscow to Veshenskaya. The attending physician A.P. Antonova will write later: “It is impossible to operate, it is impossible to save. The ongoing treatment, including repeated laser therapy, extended life by more than two years. Alleviate suffering. And the suffering was severe. Mikhail Alexandrovich was very patient, courageously endured them. And when I realized that a serious illness, a long-term illness was progressing uncontrollably, I made a firm decision to return to Veshenskaya. During the last week of his stay in the hospital, he slept very little at night, he went into himself. He told me, the attending physician, in private: “I made a decision ... to go home. I ask you to cancel all treatment ... nothing else is needed ... Ask Maria Petrovna here ... ”- and fell silent. They called Maria Petrovna. She sat down next to the bed, close. Mikhail Alexandrovich put his weakened hand on her arm and said and asked: “Marusya! Let's go home ... I want homemade food. Feed me at home… As before…”.

1. Introduction

2. Biography

3. The main features of creativity.

4. Quiet Don

5. Grigory Melekhov

6. Aksinya

7. Bolsheviks

8. "The fate of man"

9. The value of Sholokhov's work

10. Bibliography

Introduction

In the 1930s, the world-famous novels by M. Sholokhov "Quiet Flows the Don" and "Virgin Soil Upturned" (1st book) were published. Sholokhov is an outstanding writer of our country, the greatest master of artistic expression. His works are widely known both in our country and far beyond the borders of the Soviet Union.

“... A remarkable phenomenon in our literature is Mikhail Sholokhov,” said A. Tolstoy ... “He came to literature with the theme of the birth of a new society in the throes and tragedies of social struggle. In The Quiet Don, he unfolded an epic, saturated with the smells of the earth, a picturesque canvas from the life of the Don Cossacks. But this does not limit the larger theme of the novel:

“Quiet Flows the Don” in terms of language, cordiality, humanity, plasticity is a pan-Russian, national, folk work.

“Sholokhov's work is a masterful one,” A. V. Lunacharsky wrote about Virgin Soil Upturned. - A very large, complex, full of contradictions and rushing forward content is dressed here in a beautiful verbal figurative form ... "

Biography

Ikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 on the Don, on the Kruzhilin farm, into a working-class family. He studied first at the parochial school, and then, until 1918, at the gymnasium. During the Civil War, Sholokhov lived on the Don, served in the food detachment, and participated in the fight against white gangs. In 1920 he created a Komsomol cell in one

from the stations. At the end of the war, Sholokhov worked as a bricklayer, a laborer, and an accountant. The literary activity of the writer began in 1923. In 1925, his first book, Don Stories, was published.

Sholokhov belongs to the generation of Soviet writers who were shaped by the revolution, civil war, and socialist construction.

A. Fadeev said this well: “When, after the end of the civil war, we began to converge from different parts of our vast Motherland - party, and even more non-party young people, we were amazed at how common our biographies were with the difference in individual destinies. Such was the path of Furmanov, the author of the book “Chapaev”… Such was the path of the younger and, perhaps, the more talented Sholokhov among us… We entered literature wave after wave, there were many of us. We brought our personal experience of life, our individuality. We were united by the feeling of the new world as our own and love for it.”

After the publication of the first stories, Sholokhov returned to the Don, to his native village. “I wanted to write about the people among whom I was born and whom I knew,” he recalled.

In 1926, Sholokhov began working on The Quiet Don. The first book of the novel was published in 1928, the second in 1929, the third in 1933, and the fourth in 1940. Already the first books of The Quiet Flows the Don made Sholokhov's name widely known.

Gorky and Serafimovich took an active part in the literary fate of Sholokhov. Serafimovich wrote a preface to the Don Stories. He was the first to note in the author an outstanding talent, knowledge of life, great visual power, vivid imagery of language. Gorky helped the writer print the third book of The Quiet Flows the Don, which some critics tried to discredit.

During the Great Patriotic War, Sholokhov was an active participant in the struggle of the Soviet people against the fascist invaders. He wrote a number of essays and the story The Science of Hate (1942). At the same time, Sholokhov began work on a novel about the Great Patriotic War, They Fought for the Motherland. Separate chapters were published in 1943-1944 and in 1949. They depict heavy heroic battles waged by the Soviet Army in the summer of 1942 on the distant approaches to Stalingrad.

A significant artistic achievement of the writer was the story "The Fate of a Man", printed on the pages

Pravda in 1957. The story quickly became known to the whole world. Based on it, the talented Soviet film director and actor S. Bondarchuk created a wonderful film under the same name.

In 1959, Sholokhov completed the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned, thus completing the entire novel as a whole.

For the first and second books of Virgin Soil Upturned, the writer was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1960. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the international Nobel Prize.

Currently, Sholokhov continues to work on the novel "They Fought for the Motherland."

The main features of creativity.

All life and literary activity of Sholokhov is connected with the Don. The writer passionately loves his native places; in the life of the Don Cossacks, he draws themes, images, material for his works of art.

Sholokhov himself emphasized: “I was born on the Don, grew up there, studied, formed as a person and a writer and was brought up as a member of our great Communist Party and I am a patriot of my great, powerful Motherland. I am proud to say that I am also a patriot of my native Don region.”

Remarkable in brightness and strength, the artistic depiction of the life of the Don Cossacks is an important feature of Sholokhov's creative activity.

This does not mean at all that Sholokhov is a writer of some purely local, regional theme. On the contrary, on the material of the life and life of the Don Cossacks, he was able to reveal deep processes of broad historical significance. And here it should be noted the second most important feature of his work - the desire to artistically capture the turning, milestone periods in the life of our country, when the struggle of the new, socialist world against the old, bourgeois one appears in the most acute fierce and dramatic form. The Civil War (“Quiet Flows the Don”), collectivization (“Virgin Soil Upturned”) and the Great Patriotic War (“They Fought for the Motherland”, “The Fate of a Man”) are the three periods in the life of our people on which the artist’s attention is focused.

The third feature of Sholokhov's talent is connected with this - epic breadth, a penchant for monumental artistic canvases, for deep social generalizations, for raising big questions about the historical fate of the people.

The heroes of Sholokhov's works are ordinary working people. Their thoughts, sorrows and joys, their desire for happiness and justice, their struggle for a new life invariably interests the artist.

And, finally, it is necessary to note an essential feature of the writer's creative method - his dislike for any idealization of reality. Steadily follow the harsh truth of life, embody reality in all its contradictions, in all its complexity and versatility, in all its contrasts, without at all smoothing out the most intense sharpness of conflicts that arise in the difficult and complex process of the birth of a new, communist world, such. An artistic starting principle, which Sholokhov invariably adheres to.

Quiet Don

These principles, most fully manifested in the novel "Quiet Flows the Don", were already reflected in the first book of the writer - "Don Stories". The main theme of the stories is the class struggle on the Don. It is not family ties and feelings, but the place of people in the fierce class struggle that determines their relationship with each other. Often even fathers and children, siblings become mortal enemies. In the story "Kolovert", the old Cossack Kramskov and his two sons, who went to the Reds, are captured by the Whites. They are shot by their youngest son Mikhail, a white officer. In the story “Bakhchevnik”, the father is the commandant of the White Guard military court, an executioner and torturer, and his son Fyodor is a Red Army soldier. Fyodor, wounded in the leg, is pursued by the whites. The father discovers him in the melon and is going to deal with him. Then the youngest son Mitya, in order to save his brother, kills his father. In the story "Wormhole", the Komsomol member Styopka hates with a burning hatred his father Yakov Alekseevich the fist and the world-eater. In punishment for the fact that the bulls allegedly disappeared through the fault of Styopka, Yakov Alekseevich and his eldest son brutally kill a Komsomol member.

Drawing the furious malice of the enemies of the revolution, their bloody deeds, Sholokhov proves that, on the contrary, among the revolutionary Cossacks, who were forced to defend a new life in fierce battles, high and noble qualities were manifested - readiness for self-sacrifice, heroic courage and true humanity.

If in the "Don Tales" the struggle of classes was depicted mainly within the narrow limits of the Cossack family, then this theme is developed in a completely different way in "Quiet Don". The Quiet Flows the Don is one of the most outstanding works of Soviet fiction. M. I. Kalinin, in a conversation with young writers in 1934, said: “The Quiet Don” I consider our “best work of art. Some passages are written with exceptional force.”

A. M. Gorky attributed The Quiet Flows the Don to books that "gave a broad, truthful and most talented picture of the civil war."

Based on the best achievements of Soviet literature in depicting the civil war, Sholokhov managed to create a deeply innovative and original work.

In The Quiet Don, Sholokhov, first of all, appears before us as a master of epic narration. The artist unfolds a vast historical panorama of turbulent dramatic events widely and freely. "Quiet Flows the Don" covers a period of ten years, from 1912 to 1922.

The action in the novel develops on two levels - historical and domestic, personal. But both these plans are given in inseparable unity. The patriarchal idyll of Melekhov's youth is destroyed on a personal level by his love for Aksinya, and on a social level by Gregory's clash with the cruel contradictions of historical reality... The denouement of the novel is also organic. In terms of personal, this is the death of Aksinya. In terms of socio-historical, this is the defeat of the White Cossack movement and the final triumph of Soviet power on the Don;

Both intertwining storylines - personal and historical - are completely exhausted. The tragic collapse of the hero is logical and complete.

In the first book, the action begins before the war and ends in the sixteenth year. It speaks about the life and life of the village, about the youth of Grigory Melekhov, about the events of the imperialist war.

The second book covers the period from October 1916 to the spring of 1918. The February days of 1917, the Kornilov region, Great October, the beginning of the civil war on the Don - that's what stands in the center of the book.

The chronological framework of the third book: spring 1918 - May 1919. It depicts the fierce struggle of the Soviet people with the White Guard counter-revolution in the south. And finally, the fourth book, covering the period from the spring of 1919 to 1922, tells about the complete defeat of the White Cossack movement and the final victory of Soviet power on the Don, the Imperialist war, the revolution, the civil war - these are the historical events that found their artistic reflection.

The action in the novel takes place on the Western front, in St. Petersburg and Moscow. But the main scene of action is the Cossack village. The historical fate of the Don Cossacks during the war and revolution is the main content of Sholokhov's epic. Sholokhov worked out the social question of great importance and significance - the path to revolution and socialism of the broad masses of the people.

The transition of the masses to the side of the revolution and socialism can be traced in the fate of the Cossacks. This determined the special character of the portrayal of the class struggle in The Quiet Don.

The Cossacks were distinguished by a number of peculiar social features. For many years, tsarism regarded the Cossacks as its zealous and devoted servants, not so much in wars against external enemies, but in the struggle against the revolutionary people, against the liberation movement. The Cossacks were placed in special, privileged conditions. They often did not know those disasters and hardships that the Russian working people endured. Among them, hostility was kindled towards national minorities, towards all non-Cossacks, nonresidents. This developed in the Cossacks a sense of class superiority, made it difficult for revolutionary ideas to penetrate their environment, and during the years of the civil war made part of the Cossacks an obedient instrument of the White Guard counter-revolution.

Of course, there was a class stratification on the Don. And there the struggle of the labor Cossacks against the kulaks and landowners unfolded. But the above circumstances gave the civil war on the Don a special bloody bitterness. In The Quiet Don, Sholokhov tried with all his might to reveal the extraordinary sharpness and unprecedented bitterness of class battles among the Cossacks.

The civil war was a life-and-death war between the two main camps - the camp of the revolutionary people, led by the communists, and the counter-revolutionary camp, which united the landowners, the bourgeoisie, and the kulaks. These main opposing forces are reflected in The Quiet Don. Here we see, on the one hand, the landowner Listnitsky, the Korshunov kulaks, the merchant Mokhov, the White Guard generals and officers - the vicious enemies of the Soviet people, people deprived of honor and conscience, executioners and murderers. Their program is clear and distinct. They want to drown the revolutionary people in blood and restore the old, tsarist order in order to again be able to enjoy all the blessings of life, ruthlessly exploiting the workers and peasants.

The revolutionary people and their selfless defenders, spokesmen for their interests, the revolutionaries Podtelkov, Bunchuk, Shtokman, Kotlyarov, Mikhail Koshevoy, Pogudko, are waging a mortal war against them.

But the focus of the writer's attention is not on these two main, opposing class camps, but on Grigory Melekhov, the spokesman for the moods of the vacillating, intermediate social forces. Melekhov's life, his youthful years, the story of his marriage to Natalya, love for Aksinya, his participation in the imperialist war, and then in the civil war and,:

finally, his spiritual devastation is what forms the plot outline of the novel. Grigory Melekhov is at the center of The Quiet Flows the Don, not only in the sense that he receives the most attention: almost all the events in the novel either take place with Melekhov himself or are somehow connected with him.

Grigory Melekhov

For in those days there will be such sorrow,

which has not been since the beginning of creation...

even to this day it will not be ... betray

brother to brother to death, and father

children; and the children will rise
parents and kill them.

From the gospel

the same represents Grigory Melekhov? Melekhov is characterized in the novel in many ways. His youthful years are shown against the backdrop of the life and life of the Cossack village. Sholokhov vividly depicts the patriarchal way of life of the village. The reader clearly sees such features of Cossack life as the spirit of courage and love of freedom, high concepts of military honor and, at the same time, bestial cruelty, darkness, blind hatred for newcomers, non-residents. Already in the initial chapters of the novel, which constitute a kind of prologue to The Quiet Flows the Don, a wild and disgusting scene of reprisal against Grigory's grandmother, whom the Cossacks suspected of witchcraft, is depicted. Features of darkness and savagery are expressed in the scene of the battle at the mill between the Cossacks and visiting Ukrainian peasants.

The character of Grigory Melekhov is formed under the influence of conflicting impressions. The Cossack village instills in him from an early age courage, straightforwardness, courage, and at the same time she inspires him with many prejudices that are passed down from generation to generation. Grigory Melekhov is smart and honest in his own way. He passionately strives for truth, for justice, although he does not have a class understanding of justice. This is a bright and large person, with great and complex experiences. And with all this, Sholokhov emphasizes the disastrous behavior of Grigory. Melekhov's tragedy lies in the fact that he failed to merge with the revolution and, by the inevitable force of circumstances, found himself in the camp of its worst enemies. The impasse in which he found himself, a spiritual collapse is a just retribution for the break with the people, with the great truth of the revolution.

According to his social position, Grigory Melekhov is a middle peasant. He is both an owner and a worker. The feeling of ownership distances him from the revolution, connects him with the bourgeois world; the feeling of the worker, on the contrary, brings him closer to the revolutionary proletariat, arms him against the exploiters and parasites. These contradictory tendencies are intensified and complicated by class prejudices. Fluctuations between irreconcilable class poles, between fighting hostile camps, the search for an unrealizable "third way" in the revolution - not with the Reds and not with the Whites - this is what determines Melekhov's behavior.

In the final scenes of the novel, Sholokhov reveals the terrible emptiness of his hero. Melekhov lost his most beloved person, Aksinya. Life has lost in his eyes all

meaning and all meaning. Even earlier, realizing the agonizing tragedy of his situation, he says: “I fought off the whites, I didn’t stick to the reds, and I swim like manure in an ice hole ...” And now, having buried Aksinya, he realizes that it’s all over. “He said goodbye to her, firmly believing that they parted for a short time. With his palms he diligently flattened the damp yellow clay on the grave mound and knelt beside the grave for a long time, bowing his head, swaying quietly.

There was no need for him to rush now. Everything was over."

The image of Grigory Melekhov contains a large typical generalization. The impasse in which he found himself, of course, did not reflect the processes that took place in the entire Cossacks. The typicality of Gregory lies in something else. Socially instructive is his tragic fate, the fate of a man who did not find his way in the revolution.

Drawing the drama of Melekhov, the writer, as it were, asserts: a person cut off from the people, from revolutionary truth and not finding the strength in himself to get on the right path, will inevitably suffer a moral catastrophe. This break of Gregory with the people building a new life, Sholokhov conveyed in Melekhov's dream, which is clearly allegorical in nature. “Gregory saw in a dream a wide steppe, a regiment deployed, preparing for an attack. From somewhere in the distance, a drawn-out “Squadron…” rushed when he remembered that the girths were released from the saddle. With force he stepped on the left stirrup, the saddle crawled under him ... Seized by shame and horror, he jumped from his horse. to tighten the girths, and at this time he heard the rumble of horse hooves, which had instantly arisen and already rapidly receding. The regiment went on the attack without him ... "

In the image of Melekhov, Sholokhov pronounced a verdict on the inconsistency and depravity of the “third way” in the revolution and revealed the tragic doom and death of a man who broke with the people

Aksinya

The image of Aksinya, drawn with remarkable skill, runs through the whole novel. World literature does not know of another work where the writer penetrated so deeply into the inner world of a peasant woman, a simple woman from the people. Aksinya is a complex nature and rich in her own way, with strong and deep feelings. The fate of Aksinya is also tragic. Love for Gregory, huge and all-consuming, concentrated in itself all the brightest that she had in her sorrowful life. A faithful companion and friend of Gregory, she not only shares with him all the hardships, not only experiences all the humiliations, all the bitterness of her ambiguous position, but also becomes a victim of fatal mistakes. Melekhova Aksinya shares the tragic fate of Grigory himself. She, too, could not find her way in life. Her love for Gregory was not able to give her true happiness, to make life meaningful and significant. This love eventually led Aksinya to death.

With great artistic skill, Sholokhov illuminated the inner world of his heroes. Their joys and sorrows, their love and their tragedy are conveyed by various means of art. In particular, the landscape becomes an effective means of psychological analysis for the writer. The eighth part of the novel opens with a scene magnificent in its artistic expressiveness. After a severe and debilitating illness, Aksinya regains strength and health. Very soon, tragic events will play out in her life that will lead her to death. But now she is full of joy and an unreasonable feeling of happiness. And this is how she perceives the picture of spring: “The world appeared before her in a different, miraculously renewed and seductive way. With sparkling eyes, she looked around excitedly, childishly fingering the folds of her dress. The foggy distance, the apple trees in the garden flooded with melt water, the wet fence and the road behind it with last year's deeply washed ruts - everything seemed to her unprecedentedly beautiful, everything bloomed with thick and delicate colors, as if illuminated by the sun ...

Thoughtlessly enjoying the life that had returned to her, Aksinya felt a great desire to touch everything with her hands, to look at everything. She wanted to touch the currant bush blackened by dampness, to press her cheek against the branch of an apple tree covered with a bluish velvety bloom, she wanted to step over the ruined fence and go through the mud, without roads, to where, beyond the wide log, the winter field was fabulously green, merging with the foggy distance, the winter field .. ."

Sholokhov managed here with high and perfect art to convey all the charm of spring with its dazzling light, beauty and joy in organic unity with Aksinya's mood.

In the same, the eighth part, there is another scene. Aksinya died, and Grigory buried her. He realizes with painful clarity that it's all over for him. It was a complete disaster. It is extremely characteristic that Aksinya's funeral also takes place in the bright light of a summer morning. But if in the first passage Sholokhov conveyed a feeling of joy by the very picture of nature, now Grigory's gloomy, mournful experiences are expressed by the same means of landscape painting:

“In the smoky haze of the dry wind, the sun was rising over the fierce. Its rays silvered the thick gray hair on Gregory's uncovered head, gliding over his pale and terrible face in its immobility. As if awakening from a heavy sleep, he raised his head and saw above him a black sky and a dazzlingly shining black disk of the sun.

Bolsheviks

In addition to Grigory and Aksinya, the central characters of the novel, representatives of the revolutionary Bolshevik people occupy an important place in the diverse gallery of characters in The Quiet Flows the Don.

Among the Bolsheviks depicted in the novel, we see workers: the blacksmith Garanzha, the locksmith Shtokman, the machinist Kotlyarov, the worker Pogudko. They are characterized by boundless devotion to the cause of the people, high moral qualities. The love of Bunchuk and Anna Pogudko is distinguished by great strength of feeling, purity and chastity.

In his heroes, Sholokhov emphasizes their tireless and energetic struggle for the political enlightenment of the masses, for the revolutionary education of the people. Indicative in this sense are Garanzhi's conversations with Grigory, the propaganda work of the underground Bolshevik Shtokman. Communists are given in the novel as spokesmen for the brightest aspirations of the people, leaders and mentors of the masses.

Sholokhov was most successful in the image of Mikhail Koshevoy. Almost the same age as Grigory Melekhov, a native Cossack by origin, he grew up with Grigory on the Tatar farm. Koshevoy, however, took a completely different path. Sholokhov directly contrasts Koshevoy with Melekhov. Grigory says that Koshevoy belongs to those people to whom everything was clear from the very beginning and who "have their own straight roads, their own ends." And he says this with a feeling of obvious envy.

Koschevoi is depicted multifaceted. Sholokhov emphasizes in him his love for life and the passion of his nature, seething energy, implacable hatred of enemies. “On enemies that live in vain in this world, my hand is firm!” he says. It is quite natural that at the end of the novel he becomes chairman of the farm revolutionary committee and appears before us as a representative of the victorious Soviet power. At the same time, the writer emphasizes in Koshevoy the features of excessive straightforwardness in solving complex and difficult issues of social education.

If in Grigory Melekhov the destructive power of property and the class of reactionary prejudices of the Cossacks is expressed, then in Koshevoy, on the contrary, healthy revolutionary, democratic principles are embodied; they eventually prevailed among the Cossacks and caused them to go over to the side of Soviet power, to the side of socialism.

The same principles are expressed in the leader of the revolutionary Cossacks - Podtelkov. Fedor Podtelkov is one of the outstanding figures of the young Soviet power on the Don. He was chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, military commissar and commander of the Don Soviet Army. In the second book

"Quiet Don" Sholokhov painted the image of Podtelkov - his activities on the Don and death at the hands of white executioners.

The Quiet Flows the Don has been translated into many foreign languages, received worldwide recognition and is one of the most remarkable works of socialist realism.

"Destiny of Man"

As already mentioned, in the post-war years, Sholokhov, in addition to the second book of Virgin Soil Upturned, wrote the story The Fate of a Man.

This story was a very significant artistic achievement of the writer.

The story is based on a real fact. In 1946, while hunting, Sholokhov met a driver with his little adopted son near a steppe rivulet. And he told the writer a sad story about his life. The story of a casual acquaintance greatly captured the artist. Biographers testify: “Then the writer returned from hunting unusually excited and was still under the impression of meeting with an unknown driver and a boy.

I’ll write a story about it, I’ll definitely write it, ”

However, the writer returned to the confession of his casual acquaintance only ten years later.

During this time, the material of life, apparently, crystallized and acquired a more generalized character, and thus, we have before us not just a talented record of an everyday event, but a work of art created according to all the laws of typification. This is also indicated by the program title: the fate of man. In order for the history of a random encounter to be able to claim such a broad generalization, it must have contained something very typical and significant.

Some motifs of "The Fate of a Man" were already contained in another work by Sholokhov - in the story of the war years "The Science of Hate". Both here and there we are talking about Soviet soldiers who were taken prisoner; the scenes of seeing off to the front coincide; there are similarities in what Gerasimov and Sokolov saw in the German rear. But the comparison of the stories convinces:

what was only outlined in The Science of Hate, in The Destiny of Man has acquired full-fledged artistic expression.

"The fate of man" refutes the conjectures of our enemies. who claim that Soviet literature bypasses the dark sides of life, eschews everything that brings suffering and grief. The fate of Sokolov, told by the writer, is one of the eloquent refutations of such views. And at the same time, a truly Soviet writer interprets the harsh and gloomy aspects of life without falling into despair, into hopeless pessimism. It is interesting to note that Sholokhov wrote The Fate of Man, to some extent arguing with the “literature of the lost generation” that arose in the West after the First World War. This is how, according to biographers, Sholokhov's desire to write a story matured ten years after meeting with a former front-line soldier: “... once, while in Moscow, reading and re-reading the stories of foreign masters - Hemingway, Remarque and others - depicting a man doomed and powerless, the writer returned to the same theme. Before my eyes again resurrected, revived the picture of an unforgettable meeting with the driver at the river crossing. Those thoughts and images that he had matured, hatched, were given a new impetus and given a specific form and direction. Without looking up from his desk, the writer worked hard for seven days. And on the eighth, from under his magic pen, a wonderful story “The Fate of a Man” came out ... "

The works of the “lost generation” had their own undeniable historical truth. Great artists felt that the monster of militarism was approaching humanity,

that it threatens the very existence of the world, all the great values ​​created by the labor, efforts, sweat and blood of hundreds of generations. They felt that the bourgeois civilization that gave birth to militarism was built on false and disastrous foundations. In the literature of the "lost generation" there was a very strong and sincere protest against militarism. But this protest was largely weakened by the fact that the war acted as a fatal and irresistible force, with which nothing could be done: all that remained was to curse it.

Sholokhov also takes in "The Fate of a Man" situations, as it were known to Western masters: the immense suffering that befell a person because of the war - captivity, the death of relatives, a destroyed home. But Sokolov emerges from the terrible whirlpool of war not devastated, not despairing. He retains genuine humanity and responsiveness in his soul. In the novels of Remarque and Hemingway, the only, in essence, manifestation of humanity in an atmosphere of bestiality and savagery was love for a woman. This is the only area where the personality has still retained the warmth of the human heart. In Sokolov, this warmth of the heart is expressed in a different way: the little adopted child, abandoned by the war, whom he adopted, becomes, as it were, a symbol of unfading humanity, which the war could not crush.

That is why the story, in contrast to the “literature of the lost generation”, is painted in optimistic tones.

The landscape scenes of the story-picture of early spring are still a difficult, uncomfortable, gloomy time, which, however, foreshadows warmth, sun, flourishing. In these landscape sketches, the first post-war days seem to sound with their difficult tasks, difficult and unsettled life and hardships, and with their hopes and expectations,

There are two narrators in The Fate of a Man. Sokolov simply and unpretentiously tells about his fate, and before the reader there is an image of an ordinary Soviet man - courageous, warm-hearted, steadfast, who was not broken by the terrible hardships of war.

But then the voice of the second narrator is heard - the writer himself, who listens to the confession of his hero. In this voice sounds the artist's boundless love for our people, compassion for everything that they had to endure in the war, unquenchable faith in the moral strength of the people.

Sholokhov's penetrating and humane narration about the tragic fate of Sokolov, about the suffering and torment that the war brought him and millions of other Soviet people, about his courage and inexhaustible spiritual stamina, has become widely known both here and all over the world.

The value of Sholokhov's work

first steps in literature, Sholokhov raised the most important question of the time, the question of the world-historical struggle between the social

ism and the old, possessive world. In "Don Stories" the writer drew attention to the intransigence, the bloody fierceness of this fight, breaking even family and family ties. In The Quiet Don, the writer conveyed the grandiose scale of this battle, when the socialist world had to defend its right to life in fierce battles with the counter-revolution with arms in hand. In this struggle the Soviet system won, but the struggle was not yet over. The figure of Grigory Melekhov, left at the crossroads in the finale, acquires a symbolic meaning to some extent. It was not enough to defeat the counter-revolution on the battlefields. It was necessary to defeat another no less powerful enemy - the power of property, skills, ideas, instincts, brought up over the centuries. This struggle, no less dramatic, was captured by Virgin Soil Upturned.

Mikhail Sholokhov is a truly folk writer in the deepest and truest sense of the word. His attention was always attracted by the historical fate of the working masses, he was invariably agitated by their worries and sorrows, their joys and victories.

The heroes of his books are simple, ordinary people of labor. The writer treats them with sympathy, sympathy and love, he sees their rich spiritual inner world, he affirms their inalienable right to happiness. With great power, brightness and penetration, Sholokhov creates a whole gallery of unforgettable images of ordinary people.

Sholokhov is folk in the very origins of his skill. Vitality, truthfulness, the ability to reproduce reality in all its harsh drama are combined with the artlessness and intelligibility of the artistic form. Sholokhov is an enemy of unjustified complexity in literature, of all kinds of intricate formal experiments. He writes about the masses of the people and strives to ensure that his word reaches the people.

Sholokhov's books have become a truly artistic chronicle of the Soviet era, a chronicle that captures the great and heroic deeds of the people, transforming life on the basis of freedom, happiness and justice.

Bibliography

Russian SOVIET literature, edition 17, A. Dementiev, E. Naumov, L. Plotkin, Prosveshchenie Publishing House, Moscow, 1968

Russian literature and writers, E. Kukshin, Enlightenment, Moscow, 1947

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905 in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Vyoshenskaya in the Donetsk District of the Don Cossack Region (now the Sholokhov District of the Rostov Region).

In 1910, the Sholokhov family moved to the Kargin farm, where at the age of 7 Misha was admitted to the men's parish school. From 1914 to 1918 he studied at the men's gymnasiums in Moscow, Boguchar and Vyoshenskaya.

In 1920-1922. works as an employee in the village revolutionary committee, a teacher for the eradication of illiteracy among adults in x. Latyshev, a clerk in the procurement office of Donprodkom in Art. Karginskaya, tax inspector in Art. Bukanovskaya.

In October 1922 he left for Moscow. Works as a loader, a bricklayer, an accountant in the housing department on Krasnaya Presnya. He gets acquainted with representatives of the literary environment, attends classes of the Young Guard literary association. By this time, the first writing experiments of the young Sholokhov belong. In the autumn of 1923, Youthful Truth published two of his feuilletons - "Test" and "Three".

In December 1923 he returned to the Don. On January 11, 1924, she gets married in the Bukanovskaya Church with Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaya, the daughter of the former stanitsa ataman.

Maria Petrovna, having graduated from the Ust-Medveditsky diocesan school, worked in Art. Bukanovskaya was first a teacher in an elementary school, then a clerk in the executive committee, where Sholokhov was an inspector at that time. Having married, they were inseparable until the end of their days. The Sholokhovs lived together for 60 years, raising and raising four children.

December 14, 1924 M.A. Sholokhov publishes the first work of art - the story "Birthmark" in the newspaper "Young Leninist". Joins the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.

Sholokhov's stories "The Shepherd", "Shibalkovo Seed", "Nakhalyonok", "The Mortal Enemy", "Alyoshkino's Heart", "Two Husbands", "Kolovert", the story "The Path-road" appear on the pages of the central publications, and in 1926 they are published collections "Don stories" and "Azure steppe".

In 1925, Mikhail Alexandrovich begins to create the novel Quiet Flows the Don. During these years, the Sholokhov family lived in Karginskaya, then in Bukanovskaya, and since 1926 - in Vyoshenskaya. In 1928, the Oktyabr magazine began publishing Quiet Don.

After the publication of the first volume of the novel, difficult days come for the writer: success with readers is overwhelming, but an unfriendly atmosphere reigns in writers' circles. Envy of a young writer, who is called a new genius, gives rise to slander, vulgar fabrications. The position of the author in describing the Upper Don uprising is sharply criticized by the RAPP, it is proposed to throw out more than 30 chapters from the book, to make the main character a Bolshevik.

Sholokhov is only 23 years old, but he steadfastly and courageously endures attacks. He is helped by confidence in his abilities, in his vocation. To stop malicious slander, rumors of plagiarism, he turns to the executive secretary and member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper, M. I. Ulyanova, with an urgent request to create an expert commission and give her the manuscripts of The Quiet Don. In the spring of 1929, the writers A. Serafimovich, L. Averbakh, V. Kirshon, A. Fadeev, V. Stavsky spoke in Pravda in defense of the young author, relying on the conclusions of the commission. The rumors stop. But spiteful critics will more than once attempt to denigrate Sholokhov, who speaks honestly about the tragic events in the life of the country, does not want to deviate from historical truth.

The novel was finished in 1940. In the 1930s, Sholokhov began work on the novel Virgin Soil Upturned.

During the war, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was a war correspondent for the Soviet Information Bureau, the Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda newspapers. He publishes front-line essays, the story "The Science of Hatred", the first chapters of the novel "They Fought for the Motherland." The State Prize awarded for the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" Sholokhov transfers to the USSR Defense Fund, and then acquires four new rocket launchers for the front at his own expense.

For participation in the Great Patriotic War, he has awards - the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, medals "For the Defense of Moscow", "For the Defense of Stalingrad", "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War".

After the war, the writer finishes the 2nd book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", works on the novel "They Fought for the Motherland", writes the story "The Fate of a Man".

Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov - Nobel, State and Lenin Prizes in literature, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, holder of an honorary doctorate in law from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, PhD from the University of Leipzig in Germany, Doctor of Philology from Rostov State University , Deputy of the Supreme Council of all convocations. He was awarded six Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, and other awards. In the village of Vyoshenskaya, a bronze bust was erected to him during his lifetime. And this is not a complete list of prizes, awards, honorary titles and public duties of the writer.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (May 11 (May 24), 1905, Donskoy region - February 21, 1984) - Russian Soviet writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature (1965 - for the novel Quiet Don), a classic of Russian literature.

Born in the Kruzhilin village of the village of Veshenskaya Oblast of the Don Cossack Army. Mother, a Ukrainian peasant woman, served as a maid. She was forcibly married off to a Don Cossack-Ataman * Kuznetsov, but left him for a "out-of-town", wealthy clerk A. M. Sholokhov. Their illegitimate son initially bore the name of the mother's first husband, was considered a "Cossack son" with all the privileges and a land share. However, after the death of Kuznetsov (in 1912) and adoption by his own father, he began to be considered a "son of a tradesman", "nonresident" and lost all privileges.
Education was limited to four classes of the gymnasium - then there was the war. "Poets are born in different ways," he would later say. "For example, I was born out of the civil war on the Don." From the age of 15 he begins independent labor activity. He changed many professions: a teacher of an educational program school, an employee of the stanitsa revolutionary committee, an accountant, a journalist ... Since 1921 - "commissioner for bread", at the food appraisal. For "abuse of power at grain procurements" he was sentenced by a tribunal to death (replaced by a prison - conditionally) ...
In the autumn of 1922, M. Sholokhov arrived in Moscow, tried to enter the workers' faculty - they did not take him: he was not a member of the Komsomol. Lives on odd jobs. Attends the literary circle "Young Guard", tries to write, publishes feuilletons and essays in the capital's newspapers and magazines. These experiments prompted the creation of "Don stories" (1926), which immediately attracted attention.
In 1925, M. Sholokhov returned to his homeland and began to work on the main work of his life - the novel Quiet Flows the Don. The first two books of the novel were published in 1928. The publication was accompanied by stormy controversy: the novel about the civil war, written by a very young writer "anathematically talented" (according to M. Gorky's review), puzzled both with epic scope, skill, and the author's position. The publication of the third book of the novel was put on hold due to the apparently sympathetic depiction of the Upper Don Cossack uprising of 1919. In the resulting pause, M. Sholokhov takes on a novel about collectivization on the Don - Virgin Soil Upturned. There were no complaints about the content of this book. She left in 1932. And in the same year, the publication of "The Quiet Flows the Don" was resumed - after Stalin's intervention in the fate of the book. In 1940, the last parts of this unique epic of the 20th century were published.
For "Quiet Don" M. Sholokhov was awarded the Order of Lenin, in 1941 he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree. However, the party activity of the first person of Soviet literature (especially in the post-war years) noticeably surpassed the writer's: neither during the war years (the military commander of Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda), nor after that, almost nothing came out of his pen that resembled the author of Quiet Flows the Don (except, perhaps, the story "The Fate of a Man", 1957).
In 1960, M. Sholokhov was awarded the Lenin Prize for the second book of "Virgin Soil Upturned", and in 1965 - the Nobel Prize for "Quiet Don".
Twice Hero of Socialist Labor, holder of six orders of Lenin, honorary doctor of several European universities, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov died and was buried in the village of Veshenskaya, on the steep bank of the Don.